Source: Demolitions: Hre workers bashed, shot at – NewZimbabwe 04/05/2016
HARARE city council says some of their staff members have been badly assaulted while others have been threatened with guns while trying to stop people from constructing houses in undesignated areas.
The council’s land management and development manager, Booker Masasi, said the police were not assisting them in stopping the “violent” public from erecting houses at the undesignated areas.
Masasi was presenting at a property rights workshop which was organised by Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, National Association of NGOs and Coalition for Market and Liberal Solutions in Harare Wednesday.
He said, “ZRP has not been accompanying with us to stop some of the illegal constructions in areas where the public has become so violent about the issues of accommodation.
“We have had our municipal officers being stoned by the public who have become violent. We have an example of a certain person who was trying to erect a base station at an undesignated site in Borrowdale, when went there to stop him he fired seven bullets in the air.”
Masasi said council was worried by the continued duping of desperate home seekers by housing cooperative executives.
“These housing cooperative leaders have robbed people of their resources they would have pulled for long periods of time and if you see them some of them have become so rich,” he said.
Masasi said, as result, there have many illegal structures in the capital forcing them to demolish them. Some of the houses, according to the council, are built on wetlands, areas reserved for recreational facilities and under electricity pylons.
Masasi blamed the demolitions on government’s reluctance to assist them educate and warn desperate home seekers from constructing structures on illegal sites.
Most of the houses which Harare city council has been razing down belong to desperate home seekers who would have obtained the stands from housing cooperatives linked to the ruling Zanu PF party.
COMMENTS
this is a time bomb waiting to explode
stands on expropriated land have been sold by housing cooperatives to tens of thousands of desperate home seekers, who have built modest houses there.
in addition to building costs and the costs of the stands, ferocious monthly development levies have been paid. At Caledonia east of Harare, stand holders pay $50 per month development levy, yet these stands are entirely unserviced, no roads, no water and no electricity. the legality of the entire operations are highly questionable.
And now the houses can be demolished by the city of harare or at mugabe’s whim, as happened near harare airport recently.
it comes as no surprise that there is resistance
RAMBAI
this is a time bomb waiting to explode
stands on expropriated land have been sold by housing cooperatives to tens of thousands of desperate home seekers, who have built modest houses there.
in addition to building costs and the costs of the stands, ferocious monthly development levies have been paid. At Caledonia east of Harare, stand holders pay $50 per month development levy, yet these stands are entirely unserviced, no roads, no water and no electricity. the legality of the entire operations are highly questionable.
And now the houses can be demolished by the city of harare or at mugabe’s whim, as happened near harare airport recently.
it comes as no surprise that there is resistance